POOR GIRL: Sheetal Mafatlal on her way to the court

It wasn’t quite Sheetal Mafatlal’s style. For long years, Mumbai had boasted that the bahu of the Mafatlal industrial house slept on Versace bed sheets and dried herself with its towels. She would have found the prison linen sorely lacking when she spent a night in the city’s Byculla jail on Monday.

Not everybody can make a quick leap from the glamour-filled society pages of a newspaper to the hard news-driven page one. Sheetal made the grade — and is possibly ruing every moment of it. One moment she was a high-flying celebrity, draped in diamonds and designer clothes. And then she was an “accused,” charged with evading customs duty.

“It is her mad, mad obsession with jewels that did her in. She simply loved to immerse herself in diamonds,” says a socialite who does not want to be identified.

Sheetal was detained on June 7 after she allegedly walked through Mumbai airport’s green channel without declaring and paying customs duty for jewellery worth Rs 53 lakh that she was said to have been carrying back home after a London visit. She was granted bail on Tuesday.

The latest episode about the socialite has got the grapevines buzzing. Sheetal, after all, wasn’t any old celeb. Time Magazine called her one of “India’s luxury dealmakers” in its September 2006 issue. Referring to global fashion house Valentino’s tie-up with Mafatlal Luxury, it described Sheetal, president of the company, as someone who “could easily afford to scoop up gowns by the gross.”

The introduction was eye-catching. “When a mysterious and beautiful newcomer took her seat at the Valentino show in Paris in March sporting a 20-carat diamond ring on one hand and a 200-carat emerald on the other, her appearance sent a frisson of intrigue through the front-row crowd,” it went. “Was she a couture client slumming it at the ready-to-wear shows?”

Born to a wealthy family — her parents Rajni and Manohar Bhagat owned Nirlon, manufacturers of fabric for conveyor belts — Sheetal was a handful. She shocked her peers when she married Atulya, who had two children from his first marriage. Her mother and sister were upset — especially since Atulya had once been engaged to the sister.

“Sheetal’s decision to marry Atulya was surprising considering that she could have carried on her father’s business or followed up on her modular kitchen business which she had set up herself. She had degrees in finance and law from Mumbai and had also studied at Harvard,” says a celeb watcher who knows the family.

But Sheetal opted for marriage and warred with the faction-ridden Mafatlal family once she was ensconced in the 10,000-square-foot Mafatlal bungalow in Mumbai’s elite Altamount Road. The family took its battles to court over issues such as missing paintings and jewellery. Sheetal’s mother-in-law, Madhuri, claimed that 40 paintings were missing along with silver and furniture from their Altamount address and London home. Atulya in turn filed a case against his mother claiming that jewellery worth Rs 10 crore was missing from the house.

The Mafatlals hit the headlines often. As the members clashed, Aparna, Atulya’s eldest sister, underwent a sex change operation and became Ajay. This was after father Yogendra Mafatlal died in 2005, leaving his property to Atulya and his four sisters. Some had then claimed that Aparna’s sex change was a step towards staking a claim to the Mafatlals’ Rs 40-crore property. But Ajay issued a statement denying that. “I haven’t changed my sex for the property. I had the mannerisms of a boy since I was six years old and underwent the change for personal reasons.”

The family then fought over the right to the use of rooms. Atulya posted guards outside his house against his family. Partitions were drawn up and one side of the house was occupied by Atulya and Sheetal and another by Madhuri, Ajay and Atulya’s two children from his first marriage.

Some whisper that members of the embittered family are behind Sheetal’s incarceration. The customs department had apparently been tipped off that she would be coming in with jewellery. Sheetal’s lawyer has blamed “disgruntled opponents of the Mafatlal family and industry” for the incident.

“It does look like she is being framed,” says a friend. “C’mon, Bollywood’s biggest star came back loaded with goodies and so many watches before his son’s marriage. But he promptly paid the dues at the airport.”

In Mumbai, those who partied with her refused to take calls. Few would like to be struck off Sheetal’s party list, for the socialite’s dos always made news.

In 2005, she hosted a party for Prince Michael of Kent. Designer Manish Malhotra attired her in a bright green sari for the event. Somebody had then remarked that the overly burgundy theme of the party was almost “bordello-ish.” But few complained, for the city’s jet setters were all there.

Atulya had then said rather indulgently, “My wife drives me nuts in her quest for perfection. At home, I cannot eat pizza out of a box.”

After Sheetal’s night in jail, that would be the least of her worries.